2012 Summer Olympics - Page 14

Both NBC and CTV are showing the Federer-Murray tennis final (aka Wimbledon rematch) live on their main O.T.A. networks.

Interestingly, CTV is not using its own commentators, instead opted to broadcast the NBC network feed (with Ted Robinson and John McEnroe) and without the NBC Live watermark at the top right corner. Also, on CTV's analog SD, we get the 16:9 letterboxed feed. NBC analog presents the 4:3 center-cut.

Update: on the replays' cut in's and out's, we still get the NBC Peacock/Olympic Rings swoops on CTV.
Edited by JCL - 8/5/12 at 6:49am

Somebody please explain why the Men's final is Best three-out-of-five when all the other rounds are two-out-of-three?

Would expect NBC ring transitions if CTV taking NBC rather than OBS coverage (replacing the rings is possible on a modern vision mixer/switcher - but I doubt NBC would be interested in the complexity required to do so) Suspect the NBC Peacock bug is added downstream so not an issue.

As for 4:3 vs 16:9 letterbox presentation - as has been said before, the US networks no longer produce a 4:3 SD feed, and 4:3 feeds are generated a long way downstream by cable providers etc. from the 16:9 HD feed. If the feed doesn't have useful AFDs or the provider ignores them - then 4:3 centre cut permanently is the only safe way to avoid postage stamp (which would be the case if you permanently letterboxed a 16:9 HD feed - and it carred 4:3 material pillarboxed)

Also - apparently OBS are taking the BBC commentary for the world olympic feeds (provided to broadcasters who don't have their own commentary teams) rather than doing their own. Must be a bit tricky when a Brit is doing well... Watching the sailing it was apparent that the BBC commentators (aka announcers) and presenters (aka anchors) were on the public address system for the spectators.

Some of the OBS replays still make it to the NBC telecast -- one can tell because those only have the Olympic rings.

NBC's network feed is strange, the main programme content (I.e the Olympic competition coverage) does not have AFD's, but the commercials do!! So if the advert is 16:9 HD, it will be letterboxed on the 4:3 analog channel. Then the tennis is zoomed back to 4:3 center-cut.

Hey, Sneals! As a Brit you must be enjoying this match better than the one four weeks ago? The NBC guys were joking that with the Scottish referendum next year, this is Murray's last chance to win this as a Brit.

Yep - I don't think NBC do their own thing for every sport, and not all the time, they do take some OBS feeds as well (and those will have OBS ring transitions). The NBC branded rings indicate a local NBC replay, the OBS indicate one on the host feed. Are those network commercials or local commercials - it could be that local content is AFDed but network AFDs are not passed-on?
Interesting match - though Murray really polarises people in the UK - as he can be quite anti-English at times. I know English Brits who were cheering for Federer in the Wimbledon final...

Yep - though Scotland fully leaving the union is looking unlikely. They've now introduced a third-way into the referendum - further develotion than now, but stopping short of separation.

Will be interesting to see what happens in sporting terms if Scotland do fully leave the union though. That said the Olympics is one of the few sporting events where the UK competes as a single team (athletics may be another?). In many other international sporting events they don't. In football, rugby (apart from as the British Lions), the home nations play separately, and in the Commonwealth Games we fragment even further (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Jersey, Guernsey, Isle of Man etc. all compete separately)

Wimbledon protocols out the window. After Serena Williams won her final, NBC gets the first court-side TV interview. I see John McEnroe interviewing Murray now, but did BBC get one in before NBC? I couldn't tell because NBC had a commercial break before the interview.

Yep - Sue Barker (main Wimbledon presenter who MCs the Wimbledon trophy ceremony) from the BBC got Andy before John McEnroe for NBC. However I suspect there is a bit of co-operation - John also works for the BBC at Wimbledon (and has been featured in a lot of BBC Olympic programmes) Quite soon after John got his interview with Andy for NBC, John himself appeared on the BBC! (And is now courtside with Sue and Federer) Sue hasn't been on-site at the tennis earlier in the week (she anchors the BBC Olympic studio at the Olympic Park daytime usually)

I think something similar may have gone on at the swimming. When NBC weren't live the BBC got the first interviews (and thanked NBC for going second) with the US swimmers. Think the BBC may have gone second with US competitors when NBC were live.

That's kind of the right way to do it isn't it?
(BTW - Chad Le Clos's dad has become a bit of a cult figure here after an amazingly emotional interview with Clare Balding of the BBC after his son won gold for South Africa)
Edited by sneals2000 - 8/5/12 at 8:44am

It is hardly surprising that the BBC is still held up as an example of the best broadcasting in the world. It exists for the purpose of making programs, whereas commercial broadcasters' purpose is to make money, a huge philosophical difference. What is surprising is that, despite this, so many good programs come from the commercial sphere. The UK's ITV network has made many programs of such high quality that many viewers assume they were made by the BBC! And its existence has made the BBC better. And despite their obvious flaws the US commercial networks have often been innovative and adventurous despite the need to produce profits. I've worked for both commercial and public broadcasters and have found passionate program makers everywhere. The only shame is that the US does not have a stronger public broadcaster than PBS.
Sorry to be off-topic, but Sneals' obviously proud comments resonated with me.

That is the format it is supposed to show up as on an analog feed. NBC is sending 4:3 center cut as the AFD code for all sports programming. News also gets the 4:3 center cut code. The only thing they send the letterbox code for is entertainment programming and commercials.

Yep - and please don't take my comments to suggest that commercial broadcasters don't and can't make good programmes. They can and do. They need to make good shows so that they can deliver eyeballs to advertisers. However there is a different dynamic at play in that relationship.

Thinking about it - the BBC AFD Sport as 4:3 as well. Almost everything else is AFDed as 14:9 (not used in the US - but 14:9 letterbox is the UK compromise for most 16:9 content displayed on 4:3 displays) - though movies are usually AFDed for 16:9 letterbox.

I think they do that to get the same amount of action in the quicker time frame. Also, quite a few tennis tournaments are played with best two-out-of-three sets.

I am disappointed in NBC's coverage today for one reason. I wanted to hear a little bit of Keith Mansfield's "World Champion" (which Americans know as NBC's Wimbledon theme). I love Olympic themes, just thought it would have been appropriate here (like a certain "Roundball Rock" was plyed during the US Basketball team's appearence at Beijing in 2008.

Thanks. I'm watching the final day of swimming at the moment.

sneals who is the Scottish announcer for the women's diving?

Good info. Watching WImbledon for all these years, I never get to know the name of that tune!!! I should've googled that up. :-) Me too, wouldn't that be a hoot! But ESPN has taken over Wimbledon (on this side of the pond), time to move on.

Unfortunately, the person who captured the CTV airing did not capture the medal ceremony, or that banner, for the men. Don't know why the cappers do that. Almost as bad as NBC sometimes.

CTV is putting a lot of it's short-form Olympic content on the web. CTVOlympics.ca is deploying Microsoft Silverlight technology to stream live and recorded content. However, such technology can result in significant time delays, even if the content is said to be "L-I-V-E". The tennis matches streamed on the website were 2 or 3 points behind -- longer than the scoreboard, which is instantaneous, and the TV, which is about 5 seconds behind.

CTV is also partnering with Youtube on a "CTVOlympics" channel. Go to YouTube and search for "CTVOlympics". The Gold Medal point of the Federer-Murray match is one of the HD clips available on that channel. I suspect that it is blocked outside of Canada, though. But if you CAN see it, it's actually a clip of NBC's network feed - with Robinson/McEnroe at the mic (which CTV was carrying at the time).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzhJO18fXIM&feature=plcp

Tried to watch the spring board diving on NBC and quickly went to the BBC site, they are out of control on the ads. They keep breaking away from the event like every few minutes.

sneals I meant on the 3D coverage from yesterday's dives. I can't find her name on the web she sounds Scottish anybody know who she is?

The ads on NBC sometimes break your Adobe flash plugins

I've noticed that.

The Men's 100 metres Final coming up in 10 minutes. 3 Jamaicans and 3 Americans in the race. I am watching on CTV in HD on my 55", but promise will not spoil it here -- NBC won't show it for another 6 hours.

Watching this right now.

The photographers and video crews going crazy at the finish line now. Watching on CTV. About 10 seconds after the race, the OBS feed (I think) froze for a couple of seconds as the winner kneeled on the ground. I think it is because there were just too many people at the finish line, interferring with the signals.

For those of you watching outside of North America, did you get the freeze as well?

This might have been a big story.... fortunately it wasn't. Just a split second before the starting gun went off, some jerk at the back threw a glass bottle toward the starting blocks, in the direction of the 8 runners, landing -- perhaps, about 10 feet behind Lane 4. Fortunately it did not induce any false starts and didn't hit anyone. CTV has just replayed that sequence for it's audience.

I thought I read the commentary provided on the online NBC feeds is either OBS-supplied and intended for countries without commentary teams of their own on site in London or freelancers NBC brought on board specifically for the online coverage. But if what you heard included analysis from Michael Johnson (the American sprinter), then that was the BBC commentary.
Edited by agus0103 - 8/5/12 at 2:49pm

I noticed the "live" CTV feeds were quite a bit delayed the other day and wondered if they were doing that on purpose for some reason or if it was just that way on the internet. I do like the platform they're using, though, with the ability to do picture-in-picture or a split screen with up to four feeds playing at once. The 3.5 Mbps HD quality also plays smoothly on my computer and looks pretty good. RTVE in Spain is using the same platform as CTV for their feeds, but instead of Silverlight they're using Flash, resulting in a dramatically higher use of computer resources and jerky HD video.

I was watching the NBC online feed, and I saw the same freezing.